The great melting pot, version 2

 

America has long been a home of immigrants. With the exception of the Native population, literally everyone who lives here is descended from immigrants, and that includes Donald Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland, and whose paternal grandfather came from Germany.

Both his first and third wife were also immigrants. Ivana came from Croatia, and Melania came from Slovenia.

In less than 20 years, Caucasians will be a minority in this country, due to declining birth rates of white folks, and increased immigration of people from places like Mexico and the Orient.

The reason that we now have the strongest economy in the world is due to immigrants. Not only do they pick farm crops, they also have founded some very successful companies.

Apple founder Steve Job’s birth father was born in Syria, and one of the founders of Google (Sergi Brin) was born in Russia. He was wealthy enough that he could afford to pay his ex-wife $1 billion in their divorce settlement.

The face of immigrants was brought home to me today when I monitored an ELD (English language learner) class at a local high school.

 Just for fun, I asked the students to write down their first languages.

 7 spoke Arabic

7 spoke Spanish

1 spoke Wolof (a language spoken in west Africa)

2 spoke Farsi

4 spoke French

1 spoke Turkish

1 spoke German

1 spoke Samali

1 spoke Swahili

Using Google Translate, I asked the Swahili speaker in his native language how many languages he spoke.

His answer was “eight”

As you know by now, a person who speaks two languages is bi-lingual)

A person who speaks three languages is tri-lingual

A person who speaks many languages is a polyglot

A person who speaks one language?

An American

There are still people in this country who feel that English should be our official language.

Why that makes no sense can be found in the article below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/09/should-english-be-americas-official.html

 I’ve used the “melting pot” title once before:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-great-melting-pot.html

What many surprise is how many languages are spoken in America.

The answer is 430, but there are countries where even more are spoken.

#1 on the list is Papua New Guines, where 840 languages are spoken.

Indonesia, Nigeria, and India are also in the top 5, and China is right behind, with 301 languages spoken.

 https://www.pangea.global/blog/top-10-countries-that-speak-the-most-languages/

I’m of the opinion that languages can be fun, which is why is have studied 6 (English, Latin, Spanish, German, ASL sign language and Chinese.) However, English is the only one that I can actually use to carry on a conversation. If you like to speak another language, Google Translate and Babbel can make things easier for you.

Even in America, though, English itself can be a foreign language.

I was on a bus once in Chicago where a few people were speaking Ebonics, the “native tongue” of the south side of Chicago.

Here is what it sounds like:

I Speak Jive - Airplane! (5/10) Movie CLIP (1980) HD

There is also a large difference between how English is spoken in Boston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiana, and Dallas.

When I first moved to the Chicago area, I was accused of having an accent.

My response was that I did not have an accent because I was from Minnesota.

Minnesota, of course, has its own language system:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-talk-minnesotan.html

For now, that’s all I have to say.